Casinos and other forms of gaming comprise a growing multi-billion dollar industry both domestically and abroad, with electronic and microprocessor based gaming machines being more popular than ever. A gaming entity that provides gaming services may control gaming devices that are globally distributed in many different types of establishments. For example, gaming machines may be placed in casinos, convenience stores, racetracks, supermarkets, bars and boats. Further, via a remote server, a gaming entity may provide gaming services in locale of a user's choosing, such as on a home computer or on a mobile device carried by the user.
Electronic and microprocessor based gaming machines can include various hardware and software components to provide a wide variety of game types and game playing capabilities, with such hardware and software components being generally well known in the art. For example, bill validators, coin acceptors, card readers, keypads, buttons, levers, touch screens, displays, coin hoppers, player tracking units and the like are examples of hardware that can be coupled to a gaming machine. Software components can include, for example, boot and initialization routines, various game play programs and subroutines, credit and payout routines, image and audio generation programs, security monitoring programs, authentication programs and a random number generator, among others.
The functions available on a gaming machine may depend on whether the gaming machine is linked to other gaming devices. For instance, when connected to other remote gaming devices, a gaming machine may provide progressive jackpots, player tracking and loyalty points programs, cashless gaming, and bonusing among other items. Many of these added components, features and programs can involve the implementation of various back-end and/or networked systems, including more hardware and software elements, as is generally known.
In a typical casino-based electronic gaming machine, such as a slot machine, video poker machine, video keno machine, or the like, a game play is initiated through a wager of money or credit, whereupon the gaming machine determines a game outcome, presents the game outcome to the player and then potentially dispenses an award of some type, including a monetary award, depending upon the game outcome. In this instance, the gaming machine is operable to receive, store and dispense indicia of credit or cash as well as calculate a gaming outcome that could result in a large monetary award. The gaming machine is enabled to operate in this manner because it is placed typically in a location that is monitored (e.g., a casino), the gaming machine hardware and software components are secured within a locked cabinet and the gaming machine includes a security system for detecting fraud or theft attempts.
Because gaming machines can be operable to accept, store, dispense and/or award large sums of money, gaming machines are often the targets of theft attempts. Thus, besides including a security system, gaming software and gaming hardware are designed and/or selected to resist theft attempts and include many security features not present in personal computers or other gaming platforms. For example, a hardware-based security method for preventing illegal software modification is to store gaming software on an unalterable memory, such as an on EPROM, a read-only CD/DVD optical disc or a read-only disk memory with write capability disabled. As another example, a software-based security method for preventing/detecting illegal software modifications is to execute authentication routines that compare information stored and programs executed on the gaming machine against known and trusted information. The trusted information and authentication routines can be stored in a trusted memory location such as a verified EPROM on the gaming machine.
A gaming entity may provide gaming services to tens of thousands of users. For instance, a single land-based casino may include thousands of gaming machines. Player's gaming interests are constantly changing and the effort associated with providing fresh content to users is quite costly. The ability of a casino operator to maximize their operating profits and keep their customers happy is directly linked to their ability to provide new and desirable gaming content.
One mechanism casino operators have used to promote game play is via tournament game play, where, for example, several different players at different gaming machines may compete against each other during a specified gaming tournament. Typically, in order for a particular gaming machine to participate in tournament play of a specific game, customized game code must be developed for that game and deployed at the gaming machine in order to support play of that game in tournament mode at that gaming machine. Such a process may be quite time consuming, especially as new tournament features are developed, typically necessitating a retrofit on previously customized games to support the new feature(s).